Ramblings on children's literature and reading

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I’ve been following the wonderful #thedarkisreading hashtag Twitter with delight. There is amazing fan-art, as well as readers old and new, has been a midwinter treat. This question from Robert McFarlane, who first proposed the re-read, got me thinking.

I was given Dr Dimitra Fimi’sCeltic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy for Christmas from my wonderful and supportive parents (academic books aren’t cheap, you know!) and coincidentally have been researching and drafting a chapter for my PhD thesis- a timeline of British children’s fantasy fiction from Alan Garner’s Elidor to Robin Jarvis’s The Whitby Witches- so I have been thinking about developments in children’s fantasy fiction over 50 years. Elidor features a mix of Welsh and Irish myth; The Whitby Witches is strongly rooted in Whitby and contains a mixture of legends of Whitby, such as St Hilda, the Hand of Glory from the Whitby Museum and the Barghest.

It is not surprising that both Garner and Cooper write mythopoeic fantasy, since they (as well as Diana Wynne Jones and Penelope Lively) studied at Oxford during the era of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkein, as C. Butler’s Four British Fantasists (2006) discusses. Michael Levy and Farah Mendlesohn‘s 2016 Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction posits the positioning of Britain as a melting pot, a mongrel nation, by the British left of the 1970s. In the face of National Front marches, Robert Leeson’s A Third Class Geniewas explicitly positioning racist and classist attitudes as both wrong and against the spirit of Britain that won the war, although it uses the myths of the Arabian Nights rather than British or Celtic myth.

The Call is not, like the books above, written about Britain. The book is set in the North West of Ireland, a dystopia where the Sidhe, terrifying fairy folk, have risen to take back Ireland from humans. They are stealing teenagers and taking them back to the fairy realm. Most do not return, and those that do are altered, either mentally, physically or both. Because of this education is focused in boarding schools, on training students to survive the call for three minutes. The use of Irish mythology is unsettling; it disconnects the students from the land, rather than reinforcing their place in it. The body horror is vivid and, well, horrible. The sequel is published in March and I’ll be waving my money at a bookseller soon after.

Crongton Knights is also set in a dangerous, alienating landscape: that of the fictional London borough of Crongton. This is the second in a trilogy, but I first read it as a stand-alone book and it’s easy to pick up the narrative and the characters from the first book, Liccle Bit. McKay, Jonah and Liccle Bit are 14 year olds, living on an estate in South Crongton. They go on a perilous quest on the bus to North Crongton, to retrieve the phone of the beautiful Venetia, stolen by her ex-boyfriend, Sergio, who took naked photos of her, that her strict Christian family cannot find out about. A simple enough task, apart from the ongoing feud between North and South Crongton youth, and the gangster Manjaro, who has a score to settle.

McKay is an engaging character; a boy who has been teased for his weight, and who takes joy in becoming the cook in his family following the murder of his mother. Touchingly, as well as appreciating how attractive Venetia’s Turkish friend Saira is, he also picks up the scent of lamb kofta at her house; a delightful detail. The story is told in McKay’s voice; he loves both Star Wars and Tolkien, and uses imagery of chivalric Arthurian quests along with Black London slang to create a new language that is distinct and metaphorical: castles for tower blocks; drawbridges for doorways; McKay goes to his dungeon rather than his bedroom. The book even has a map at the front of it. It’s a beautiful book, well worthy of its Guardian award for children’s literature.

At the moment, I am reading and researching for a thesis chapter that creates a timeline of children’s fantasy from Alan Garner’s Elidor to Robin Jarvis’s The Whitby Witches (do read Daisy Johnson’s wonderful review of the latter here) and enjoying catching up with some old favourites.

Robert Leeson was the literary editor of socialist newspaper the Morning Star before becoming a children’s author. He was a prolific writer, in many different genres: social realist (including tie-ins with long-running children’s TV school drama Grange Hill), historical, science fiction, and fantasy- including The Third Class Genie (1975). Set in the outskirts of Manchester, it is what Leeson states he set out to do when he first started writing for children: a modern story about ordinary children, involving adventure: a mixture of fantasy and reality (Leeson, 2000).

Alec, the hero of the story, is a comprehensive school boy from a working class family: his dad is a train driver, his mum is a housewife who was formerly a crane operator, and is big sister works at a biscuit factory. While running away from another boy, Alec finds a sealed, but empty beer can, which when he opens it, releases Abu Salem, the Third Class Genie. Alec of course is excited by the possibilities of having a magical being to do his bidding- but a genie from ancient Arabia has no concept of 20th Century Manchester, and the expected hi-jinks ensue.

So far, so cliched- of course Nesbit and Eager have made magical mix ups a familiar trope in children’s low fantasy. But Leeson was also writing in an era of extreme racism in Britain; it was only 10 years on from the openly racist election campaign run by the Conservative Party in Smethwock, West Midlands. The Ugandan Asian refugees, escaping Idi Amin’s murderous regime, stoked the fires of the far right Nationa Front party, whi came close to local election success in the early 1970s. Enoch Powell MP’s anti-immigration Rivers of Blood speech was only 7 years old. The boy Alec is running away from at the beginning of the book is Ginger Wallace, who is Afro Caribbean. Ginger is insulted and bullied at every turn. A local councillor is obsessed with illegal immigration (clearly shown to be a thin veil over his racism) and Alec must team up with Ginger and his sister, Eulalia, to hide Abu Salem from him. Ginger’s family are accused of spreading disease through over crowded, poorly maintained housing. Although these aspects are handled lightly, they are there, with Leeson’s sympathies clearly lying with Alec’s famil, Abu Salem and Ginger and his family, and a delightful comeuppance for the racist characters.

This book deserves its Modern Classic status. I wish Leeson’s other work, including his wonderful non-fiction book on children’s literature, Reading and Righting, was better known.

Earlier this year, I finally watched all of Veronica Mars (except the film; I haven’t bought that yet!) and I loved it. It’s a combination of Buffy and Philip Marlowe, with Veronica coping with social ostracism, the murder of her best friend and the growing realisation that she has been raped while passed out, all with a millenial soundtrack and pink crop hoodies.

iZombie

At Worldcon 75 I went to my first fan meet up, on wonderful iZombie TV programme, showing on Netflix in the UK. Liv is a medical student who goes to a party, where zombies attack. She wakes up to discover that she is a zombie. She gets a job as a morgue assistant, handy for the brains she needs to eat to stop her attacking humans, and discovers that she temporarily takes on the personalities of the person whose brain she eats. Loosely adapted from the DC comic, it’s a great, fun TV series that has recently had season 4 commissioned.

The other piece of media I enjoyed was Lois Lane: Fallout by Greta Bond. A Young Adult novel, it is the story of Lois Lane, future journalist on the Daily Planet and love interest of Clark Kent, Superman, albeit set in the present day (hey if Smallville can get away with it…) The Lois Lane series is about Lois before she meets Clark; she is an army brat and has just moved to her umpteenth high school, in Metropolis, but has a friend that she has met through interaction on an online paranormal forum. She has a history of getting into trouble, often through standing up for her beliefs about what is right. The first book sets up Lois as a high school reporter, discovering the use of a Virtual Reality game by a shady arms company. It also sets Lois up with her own Scooby Gang.

This is something I love about all these stories. The Chosen One in effect chooses herself, but at the same time, her friends have vital skills and knowledge that support her. The friends are often excluded too; Wallace, the black nerd and Mac, the computer geek girl in Veronica Mars; Ravi the British Asian medical examiner and Peyton the high achieving but isolated district attorney. The Daily Scoop, the news website under the Daily Planet‘s umbrella, is staffed with teenagers from Lois’s high school: a secret geek, a girl with a passion for obscure band t-shirts, and a poor little rich boy, whose politician father has been at the centre of a scandal.

And if you’d like to know what it is like to be one of the other kids in the high school where the chosen one and the Scooby gang are doing their thing, then I recommend Patrick Ness’s The Rest of Us Just Live Here.

This August, I managed to go to two cons in a week: Nine Worlds in London, and Worldcon 75 in Helsinki. Both were fantastic, with really interesting content and meeting old friends and making new ones. As someone who is quite introverted, I do love spending time in a space with people who are all enthusiastic and happy to share their enthusiasm and love for culture open-heartedly; a lot of the joy I used to get from music festivals before the physical challenges of camping and the lack of ability to get away when it became overwhelming stopped making it fun I now get from cons. Anyway, here is a summary of the two cons.

I participated in both cons as well as attending them, talking about Harry Potter at both. At Nine Worlds I talked about education at Hogwarts, in Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching books and in Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy; wonderful Meg MacDonald captured it in a Storify . You can access the paper here. At Worldcon I was on the academic track, delivering a paper about punk, protest and the Borribles:

I was also on a panel about pre-Potter wizarding schools. The idea of it was great, but unfortunately it lacked something in the execution. 5 people is too many for a panel, and it was hard for the moderator to keep all the panelists to the brief; also- panelists really shouldn’t swear in a panel related to children’s fiction… but anyway, here is a list of my favourite pre-Potter wizarding schools.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin (1968). Ged, the son of a village smith, has natural talent as a wizard, and is sent to a wizarding school where he meets a a friend and an enemy. However, his arrogance and impatience puts himself and his community in danger, and Ged must battle his dark side as well as the evil he summons.

The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy (1974). Mildred Hubble, the hapless, clumsy student witch at Miss Cackle’s Academy, was a favourite of mine as a child. The series of books is set at a boarding school for witches, where Mildred has a loyal friend (Maud Spellbody), a sharp-featured, blonde-haired rival from a prominent magical family (Ethel Hallow) who is accidentally turned into a pig, and a tall, forbidding teacher dressed in black (Miss Hardbroom). Coincidences with another famous magical school are purely coincidental, I’m sure.

Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones (1982). At Larwood House, a boarding school for witch-orphans in a world where witchcraft is outlawed, Mr Crossley is marking homework. Out of one of the books falls a note: SOMEONE IN THIS CLASS IS A WITCH. This book features Chrestomanci, the Government official responsible for the regulation of magic across a series of parallel worlds similar to ours, but can be read as a stand alone- though since Diana Wynne Jones was such an amazing fantasy writer, why deny yourself the pleasure of all the books?

Finally, a series of boarding school stories that is not magical, but has so many parallels with Hogwarts that I wonder whether J K Rowling read them as a child.

The Marlows series by Antonia Forest, which starts with Autumn Term (1948) The Marlows are a large family of 8 children: Giles, Karen, Rowan, Peter, Ann, Ginty, and the twins, Nicola and Laurence, known as Laurie. In the third novel, the family inherits a rambling farmhouse after their cousin is killed in a plane crash. Despite the children’s father being a naval captain, and the oldest son Giles also being in the navy, the family is often short of money.

The first book features the school train from London to Kingscote, where the girls go to boarding school. Like the Harry Potter series, the universe of the books is expanded outside the school stories, with some wonderful adventure stories; my favourite is Peter’s Room, where the younger Marlows and their friend Patrick spend their Christmas holidays involved in a role-playing game based on the Brontes. Forest also wrote two historical novels about Nicholas Marlow, an Elizabethan ancestor of the family; the Marlow’s brother in law’s research into Nicholas is detailed in Cricket Term.

Very sadly the books are now out of print, although they have periodically been reprinted by Girls Gone By publishers.

This paper discusses approaches to pedagogy outlined in three series of books for children and young adults. By the end of the presentation, I hope to have outlined what the education systems in these novels says about the culture and society presented in these books. The books are: JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy and Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series.

Constructivism

First, a brief summary of constructivist pedagogy. Piaget was the preeminent scholar of constructivism- children go through stages of learning and construct their meaning from interaction with the environment. Social constructivism- children learn best and construct meaning through interaction with the environment alongside a more experienced learner or teacher.

Social learning theory/ Social cognition theory

Humans are self-organising, self-regulating and self- reflecting, and learning should be social, modelled by an adult to develop these innate qualities.

The pedagogy of Hogwarts

Behaviourism (Skinner) is the basis of many rewards-based behaviour management systems. Whyte and Lauriston (1980) argued that students intrinsically motivated (i.e. good behaviour is its own reward) tend to be more academically successful- for example, Hermione; Lavender Brown in Divination; Neville Longbottom in Herbology.

Remus Lupin

Rebus asks questions. He wants to assess prior knowledge but also to allow student voice (Bruner). He encourages oral rehearsal before practice. He uses praise to engage and encourage. He models what he expects from the students (Bandura). Practical activity with real life application, supported by teacher (Vygotsky). Assessment at the end of the lesson and feedback. Unfortunately, despite Lupin’s success as a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, anti-werewolf feeling leads to him leaving Hogwarts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doxxfXqpKYA

Bartimaeus trilogy

Young magicians are chosen by more experienced magicians at a young age, and are supposed to be taught and inducted into the magician life. Magicians control society in this alternate version of our world; they are government, judicial system and policing. Nathanial has tutors, and has very little interaction with his master (Arthur Underwood), who is supposed to induct him into the wizard world.

Arthur has no idea about Nathanial’s abilities; he constantly underestimates him, provides no challenge and never assesses him. He makes little attempt to get to know Nathanial and doesn’t have a holistic attitude to teaching the whole child. As a result, Nathanial becomes bored and overreaches himself.

Discworld

On the Discworld, wizards attend Unseen University where they squabble about arcane theory and academic preference, wear silly outfits and are involved with outmoded pageantry.

Witches, on the other hand, are fully involved with the community, although their status does set them apart a little. Witches are spotted by Miss Tick the Witch finder, who then arranges for the witch to become an apprentice to an older, more experienced witch. Tiffany adopts, then adapts, the practice of her mentors, eventually taking her own apprentice; Geoffrey. This education is fully grounded in a social constructivist model and has a sound moral basis- “witches speak for those who cannot speak for themselves”.

What does this tell us about the fictional worlds?

Hogwarts separates young Muggles (non wizards) from wizards, and then sorts them again into houses at the age of 11, labelling them as brave, hard working, intelligent or cunning. The “us versus them”, competitive atmosphere that this creates at Hogwarts from Harry’s first day at Hogwarts ultimately leads to the rise of the Death Eaters, the repressive Ministry of Magic under Rufus Scrimgeour and Dolores Umbridge.

In the Bartimaeus trilogy, the early separation of magicians and commoners, as well as a very jingoistic education system (seen in the second in the trilogy, The Golem’s Eye) creates resentment and ultimately revolution in the commoners and fear and suspicion in the magicians.

Pratchett tells us that “witches do the work that is in front of them”. Their education is community based, practical and ethically based. Tiffany is educated morally, spiritually and practically; by the final book she recognises the changes in Discworld with the coming of the railways.

Despite both Hermione and Tiffany’s enjoyment of reading and love of learning being shown as positives that save them in dangerous situations, all the series view education as an economic function, training young wizards and witches to fulfil their working roles in society. Through this, Rowling, Stroud and Pratchett comment on, critique and satirise contemporary society.

I just found this story in the notes on my phone. I wrote it down as he told it, playing with my action figures. He’s autistic and awesome, and loves Doctor Who.

The TARDIS crashed down on a strange planet. Martha said: “Is everyone alright?”
Madame Vastra said: “I’ve only got a little bit of blood on my bum.” Everyone went out of the TARDIS. Some baddie robots came and the Doctor and Martha had to fight them. A baddie robot fell down. A little robot said “You killed my father! You’re going down, cowboy!” They ran to the TARDIS. The Doctor said “Oh there you are! I miss you so much.”

At the UK Literacy Association international conference in Glasgow at the beginning of the month, I attended a presentation by Dr Naomi Boakye of the University of Pretoria, where she described her approach to developing academic literacy with English as a second language learners in the sociology department, which I fully intend to develop. She uses an approach that I recognise from my primary teaching days: Literature Circles roles.

I have been thinking about a piece of feedback received from my mid-module evaluations: “Alison talks too much”, which, while my initial response was “I’m a lecturer! It’s my job to talk!” made me consider to what extent I am really meeting my students’ needs. By presenting them with information in lectures and then just expecting them to discuss it, am I disempowering my students, particularly those who need longer to digest information? In addition, my frustration at those who don’t do the reading may not be helping them. Perhaps I need to make it clear to them why I have selected the weekly reading, how to read it critically and what I mean by discussing it.

So, I have adapted literature circle cards. I am going to put my students in randomly assigned groups of 5 for seminars (I have 40 students on my module next academic year) and each group will be given the role cards. They will be assigned a role for the following week’s discussion, and the roles will circulate each week. I am hoping that the need for the role cards will lessen as reading critically becomes internalised. I am seeking ethical approval for a small piece of qualitative research with my students to find out their experience of critical reading and whether or not this approach has helped them, and I will report back.